Task force finished, work remains on new school

BY SARA HENDRICKSON | Much progress was made over summer months on the new 75 Morton St. school, with parents and community members well on their way to creating their dream middle school.

At the Sept. 12 meeting of the 75 Morton Task Force, Melanie La Rocca from the School Construction Authority reported that the school’s building design had been modified to incorporate the community’s requests, including a larger library, reconfigured “gymatorium” and expanded windows. These were priority asks of the 75 Morton Community Alliance, a group of parents from feeder elementary schools that were present in force at a June forum where the S.C.A. and its architect gathered feedback on draft plans.

Participants at the meeting agreed it was “mission accomplished” for the task force, created two years ago as a joint task force with members from Community Board 2 and the Community Education Council for District 2. The collective decision was made to dissolve the task force and pass the baton to the alliance and other community groups, since all goals had been accomplished — most importantly, ensuring the city bought the building and designed an extraordinary middle school, and developing cooperative relationships with the political and parent community, the S.C.A., and the Department of Education.

“Now, the particulars should be up to others,” said Keen Berger, task force chairperson. Fellow member Heather Campbell added, “The task force has done its job of saying, ‘Focus — this is big.’ And now politicians, C.B. 2, the C.E.C. and others are all very focused.”

Alliance co-leaders Holly Noto and Patricia Laraia said productive discussions took place over the summer with D.O.E. officials to collaborate on building design. An alliance Web site will soon be launched as a “conduit for people to engage and to ensure that parents’ opinions are based on facts,” Noto said. “Our job is not to slow down the S.C.A.,” she added.

Committees have been formed to start meeting this fall and collect parent input on issues like diversity, the school’s health clinic and special education students. Regarding the latter, the school will serve about 100 District 75 students, children with disabilities such as autistic spectrum disorders. The school’s entire basement level will house a health clinic providing services for the unique physical and emotional needs of adolescents, as well as general health services for the community during afterschool hours. Councilmember Corey Johnson has advocated strongly for a health clinic in the building, and is already exploring partnerships with North Shore-LIJ Health System and others.

As planning evolves over the next months and years toward a September 2017 opening, the alliance will have plenty of support and guidance from C.E.C. District 2 and C.B. 2 to have their say on critical decisions, such as school size, principal hiring, curriculum and admissions policy. Also under consideration is an incubation site so that the school could open in fall 2016 for the large “bubble” class of sixth graders who would transfer to the new building a year later.

The C.E.C. District 2’s Middle School Committee and C.B. 2’s new Schools and Education Committee will be added resources and partners for the Alliance. C.B. 2 Chairperson David Gruber created the new standing committee, formerly part of the Social Services and Education Committee, with Jeannine Kiely and Heather Campbell, both C.B. 2 and 75 Morton Task Force members, as co-chairpersons. The Schools and Education Committee will focus on schools across C.B. 2, including 75 Morton, the new school planned in the Trinity Real Estate project at Duarte Square (at Sixth Ave. and Canal St.), and the potential new Bleecker St. school on the N.Y.U. southern superblock.

Most items on the community wish list were granted by the S.C.A., but some remain open. The S.C.A.’s current gymatorium — combined gym and auditorium — plan requires manual setup of 600 folding chairs when this flex space is used as an auditorium. Parents are still pushing, however, for retractable tiered seating and are consulting with a company that has done school installations for the S.C.A. and the Alvin Ailey Dance Company.

“We want to seat 600 students in the auditorium without parents unfolding chairs,” Berger said.

Gruber stressed, “This school will be here for a hundred years — we need to get it right.”

One of the biggest decisions on the horizon is the size of the school. La Rocca explained that the S.C.A. designed 75 Morton for a capacity of 1,014 students, including District 75 students, adhering to D.O.E. “Blue Book” formulas for classroom sizes, extracurricular rooms and other space.

“If the D.O.E. thinks enrollment should be something different, it’s their prerogative,” La Rocca said. “But they might not be ready to have that conversation since the decision on school size is a few years out, and the principal may have their own ideas. We build schools for that flexibility.”

The task force and parents have been advocating all along for a 600-to-700-student middle school, plus District 75 students, for a total of no more than 800. Berger, who has authored textbooks on developmental psychology, passed out a summary sheet at the meeting of research studies showing 300 to 600 students as the ideal middle school size. Given all the body, brain and emotional changes 11-to-14-year-olds go through, experts say that middle schoolers need individualized attention from a small group of teachers teaching the same cohort of students in a school where the principal recognizes every student.

ShinoTanikawa, a task force member and president of C.E.C. District 2, said the C.E.C. would work closely with the alliance in ongoing discussions with the D.O.E. on school size. Tanikawa has added expertise serving as co-chairperson of Chancellor Carmen Fariña’s Blue Book Working Group, which is re-evaluating the formulas for space utilization.

With most of the major building components agreed upon through a successful collaboration process so far, the S.C.A. will come back to the alliance in the next month to share final design layouts and collect the group’s input on building facades, interior colors, tiles and other finishes. The complete package will then be put out to bid with contractors and awarded in January, with construction starting in spring 2015.

As this final task force meeting wrapped up, much gratitude was expressed to staff members present from the offices of local politicians who had advocated so strongly for 75 Morton, including Assemblymember Glick, state Senator Hoylman, Councilmember Johnson and Borough President Brewer.

The marathon journey to start a new school began more than seven years ago, with parent activists scouring the city for school sites and making their voices heard about the need for a Village middle school. The advocacy has not let up. As Robert Atterbury of Hoylman’s office said, “We’re all invested heavily, and we know how to pressure agencies. There will never be a shortage of engagement.”

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2 Responses to Task force finished, work remains on new school

I have been humbled and proud, thankful and furious, over these seven years. But mostly I have been grateful for the literally thousands of community members who have kept the faith, even when we were told, five years ago, "75 Morton is dead in the water." To me our great new middle school is a small example of a larger truth — evident in marriage equality, dramatic reductions in cigarette smoking, no cars zipping through Washington Square — that community advocacy can produce social change, if people are willing to spend years at it. Next — no Fracking, fair funding of campaigns, a living wage — it all seems possible, if we keep at it. Keen Berger